


the lowdown, a picture of your face

by carmen



Category: Inception (2010), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:38:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmen/pseuds/carmen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert tries to break things off with a Prince of Asgard, but it's not a clean break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the lowdown, a picture of your face

For six months Fischer had been seeing a highly attractive lunatic, before breaking it off. Loki was always the one on top, the one demanding to be the actor rather than acted-upon. Whether this is because he considers himself a god or his inferiority complex in action, Fischer doesn't know. Sometimes his appearances involved luscious wide-set breasts and a seemingly authentic vagina, and that certainly wasn't _un_ enjoyable. But even then he managed to be as insecure about activity and masculinity as when he was stalking around in a codpiece and three-inch heels, like a cat puffing itself up to look bigger. Loki vacillates between deliberate, seething cruelty and a desperate, furious affection that Fischer Jr. knows even less how to deal with. He might tremble when Loki is near, but he's no virgin. He's gracefully cut all ties with bad girlfriends before -- not the ones who've been in it for the money, who crumple up, if they're bad liars, when he calls them what they are, or collect their payments gracefully if they're better at it -- but the one or two who have been really, sincerely fucked in the head. Hazardously, wildly, desperately. He can end that too, if he has to; having brought his own personal tragedies to the table, he has no time for dealing with anyone else's. In their whirlwind acquaintance Loki has been all over the map with him, and when Robert puts his foot down, his judgment is final.

Of course, he ought to have known he wouldn't go quietly. He's prepared to ignore Loki's calls and text messages, but there's no need, even the smallest hint of communication from him cuts out entirely. No surprise visits, no illusions, neither hide nor hair. Perhaps the law has caught up with his dear friend, or he's gone back to his home dimension in a huff -- how implausibly science fiction is that? It would make Robert giggle, if he weren't a grown man -- or he's dead in a ditch somewhere, for all Fischer cares. (No, that's not quite true; finding out he'd sent one of his former girlfriends screaming into private rehab had left him badly rattled. But at the time he was nineteen, and he'd thought he might love her.)

Robert thinks he has a handle on the situation. He thinks this is something he can hold in the palm of his hand, something he can cut off and finish with when he's tired of it. He's wrong.

 

Loki is removing one of Fischer's cufflinks with his teeth. Robert doesn't know where to start on that one -- it's really not very erotic, but Loki has him bound to his chair with snakes, that may not be what he's going for. Nor is Loki humiliating him by stripping him of some ornament, some jeweled status symbol. Well, maybe to the men who look up at him all day long, to Robert they're nothing. A birthday gift, probably, as unremarkable as the box they came in. Loki spits them out on the ground. The scene's nightmarish. Of course it is. Robert's fallen asleep in his large and expensive bed and come to _tied to an office chair with snakes_ , in an empty parking garage. It's not so much an attempt at extraction -- proven when his gun-toting mental defenses fail to appear when he calls them. Before things can take a turn for the truly depraved his scaly bonds loose and vanish, leaving Loki straddling his lap sweaty and pale -- as an attempt at _seduction_ , winning back his heart the way only a jilted god can come up with.

He feels stripped. Not physically -- the scene is only sexual in a fraught, Freudian way -- but raw and unwell, caught at a disadvantage. If his security system is down, there was nothing to prevent him from using the other tools in his head to fend this off, the more prosaic exercises not specific to defense against extraction, but first he wants a word with Loki, prince of Asgard, who has not been glamorously mortal Lucas Essenberg for a while now. Robert's not stupid, and the snakes and doppelgangers are something of a giveaway.

"You know, this is really uncalled for," Robert says, his mild irritation disguising an unease that was indeed growing. Something is dripping periodically on his shoulder, hopefully water.

"I could _own_ you, worm, how would that suit you? I could make you _love_ it, I could make you crawl--"

"I could have you delivered gift-wrapped to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. How does that suit you? You're using your magical powers to stalk your ex-boyfriend." He may have overplayed that -- his tone is slightly more derisive than he wanted it to be, because Loki is slipping his collar stays from their neatly sewn little canals with long white fingers and what exactly does he think he's doing? This isn't undressing him for sex, and it's hardly asserting his dominance. If this is an elaborate ploy to sexually assault him in his own dreamscape, Robert can check out at any time, Loki can have fun with that. His wristwatch must have gone first, he can feel the weight of it in his lap. There's no point of this, it's only _strange_. (Clearly this must be a dream. He doesn't go to bed in a suit, no one does unless they're falling-down drunk, and even Loki isn't deranged enough to dress up his insensible limp body for the express purpose of leaving him with a less than crisp shirt collar and no watch. The suit he's wearing isn't one he's ever owned.)

"You never did leave me. Not formally." The twitchiness and hoarseness both melt away in an instant, in a shimmer like one of his illusory projections vanishing. Loki sits in his lap and he's practically normal again. "We simply stopped seeing each other."

"That's generally what leaving someone means," Fischer says, taking care to be more gentle about it. "When two people stop seeing each other? Usually it's mutual."

Loki's little mouth frowns, then springs back into a smirk.  
"Was I more than you could handle?" The deity waggles one black smudge of an eyebrow. "It must be difficult for a man of your public stature to acknowledge, that you regularly lie down with a man--"

Clearly he has no idea the extent to which Robert's gone to piss his father off. The shock factor has worn off, now that he's not a slutty teenager any longer, and the fact that Loki thinks that this is difficult for him is comical. Well, maybe it is a _little_ difficult, being in a highly volatile and near-exclusively sexual relationship with a Norse god while simultaneously keeping up appearances in the world of business, but it has nothing to do with the inane, if dimly conceivable as real, fear of _what if the investors find out?_

"When we first broke up, I told you I was too busy to keep up with this. That wasn't permission to show up in my head during the seven hours a day I have entirely to myself. It's not that you aren't attractive, or that I don't like spending time with you -- which has been mostly on a physical basis. We're both adults here. We can acknowledge that. What we had was too much for me to maintain while still giving you everything you deserved."

The words are so canned, he could be reading them off of a notecard. He focuses on keeping his heart rate steady, analyzing his surroundings and the outermost limits of this dream. If this were fully real, there would be no way a full-sized Asgardian male, even one made of nothing but cheekbones and knees, could balance on his lap, on a chair, without either overturning the damned chair or hampering Fischer's ability to carry on the family name. But Loki straddles him quite deftly, his lean thighs positioned in a way not unfamiliar despite his reasonable distaste for having anything of Robert's actually inside of him.

"No one gives me what I deserve. No one else on the dismal little slick of mud understands, the strain, the trial it is to prove myself, no one but you -- or I'd hoped you did. The difficulty of all of this, of being a _prince_. I wanted you to understand."

There's a mournful quaver to his voice, and he sounds grotesquely sincere. He may even be crying. Fischer is now distinctly uncomfortable.

He lifts his hand to rub Loki's upper arm, an awkward, small comfort. . It's a surprise that it makes it there, without Loki slapping it away and reprimanding him like a bad dominatrix. He isn't wearing the cape today, thank God, but something fitted and leathery and armored. In between the ostentatious gold plates, he can feel the shape of his wiry arm under the cloth, with nothing else in between. Either in his dreams Fischer has forgotten how clothing work, or Loki's wearing a sleeveless shirt with his spiked and armored overcoat.

Loki hesitates -- nothing left to unlatch or pull out, apparently -- and shifts back slightly. Their eyes meet. People tend to compliment Robert on his eyes, or they did before he grew up and became a 30-year-old man and that became just the slightest bit inappropriate. Loki's eyes are his best feature, after his mouth. He looks wounded in the yellow light, and tired, and very vulnerable.

His hand leaves Robert's belt and lingers on his cheek instead. Oh, this is terrible, this is very, very bad, because he can already feel his throat tighten and his stomach turn with -- sympathy? Is that what this is? The worst part of falling into bed with someone whose neuroses line up with his own more than he'd care to admit. Loki's eyes are between blue and green, a color Robert can't describe without dipping into unnecessarily flowery language. And right now Fischer can see straight into his bruised psyche and it's making him weaker than he can bear. Loki is a vessel for some unbearable failing, and Robert's own private misery stirs inside him to answer it.  
He sits up as much as he can, leans forward, moves to kiss him.

"I'm not going to leave you, Robert," Loki breathes. "I respectfully refuse." The flat of his hand knocks into Fischer's cheek like a bullwhip. "Now wake up."


End file.
